The number and relevance of EU agencies have rapidly increased over the years: EU agencies nowadays constitute an important part of the EU institutional landscape. The paper investigates the EU agencies through categories of analysis well established in studies of public management focused on the phenomenon of agencies at the country level: structural disaggregation, autonomy, and contractualisation. It emerges that EU agencies are relatively homogeneous, an aspect that differentiates European agencies from the highly heterogeneous world of national-level agencies. The main features of the EU agencies are examined, the ‘European type’ of agency is identified and defined, and it is analysed the way the EU agency model differs from country-level agencies. Research agendas on the reform of the European Union might benefit from the systematic investigation of EU agencies: theoretical frameworks drawn from the public management field can provide a significant contribution in this respect.

The number and relevance of EU agencies have rapidly increased over the years: EU agencies nowadays constitute an important part of the EU institutional landscape. The paper investigates the EU agencies through categories of analysis well established in studies of public management focused on the phenomenon of agencies at the country level: structural disaggregation, autonomy, and contractualisation. It emerges that EU agencies are relatively homogeneous, an aspect that differentiates European agencies from the highly heterogeneous world of national-level agencies. The main features of the EU agencies are examined, the ‘European type’ of agency is identified and defined, and it is analysed the way the EU agency model differs from country-level agencies. Research agendas on the reform of the European Union might benefit from the systematic investigation of EU agencies: theoretical frameworks drawn from the public management field can provide a significant contribution in this respect.